Clash of the Titans LXVI: US Troops to Darfur

02/1/2008, 11:30 am -- by Bweinh | 11 Comments

In this corner, supporting deployment of American troops to Darfur, is Job!

And in this corner, opposing their use, is Chloe!

I know many people chafe against America’s stint as the world’s police, but if that role were ever necessary, the situation in Darfur is the time. This is not the global equivalent of assault, grand theft auto, or arson. It is, my friends, murder one.

I’m an isolationist at heart, but not spurious in my desire to see American intervention in areas of political or religious upheaval. I think, at times, intervention is necessary, and I support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan currently, and Haiti and Somalia in the past. But the sheer scope of the tragedy in Darfur — the injustice, the lawlessness, the bloodshed, and the fact that there are no cool heads to be put towards prevailing — gives this situation a sense of urgency on steroids.

Whatever compassionate, protective, empathetic part of the brain that responded to the great tsunami should also respond to this senseless loss of life. There are not sides to be delicately understood, or diplomatic measures to be massaged here. What is necessary is for the only nation with the willpower, the means, the expertise, and the track record — the United States of America — to send not only our soldiers and sailors to Sudan, but also our Marines.

This can’t be misconstrued as a search for oil or hegemonic dominance. This is an instance where the darkness of the world is winning, while we do nothing about it. I don’t speak of darkness in the Biblical sense — although I could focus this argument entirely on our need as a believing nation to alleviate the suffering there — but rather a darkness of ideology that continues to dim the value of life and the vigor of freedom all over the world. Our indifference — perhaps too strong a term for 2008, but which will most certainly be applied (perhaps accurately) years from now — to the plight sickens me on a personal level and frustrates me on a policy level.

What an opportunity — to reshape an image, reinvigorate our “brand,” and mold an emerging Africa in a better shape — while ending the slaughter (and that is not hyperbole) that should be casting a shadow over our nation’s collective conscience.

It’s a human rights crime. 200,000 to 400,000 dead, over two million displaced. Why the discrepancy in numbers? The chaos makes it impossible to carry out a proper count, but one thing is for sure — the situation is dire. So how could anyone say that the U.S. shouldn’t send troops to Darfur?

It’s simple — sustainability. History has taught us that the only way improvements can occur is through sustainable development. What does that mean? Consider intervention like a drug. Morphine is meant to alleviate pain. Unfortunately, if it’s administered without prudence and discretion, the recipient will become addicted, and the drug will destroy his life.

Likewise for international aid. For example, look at the 2007 report of the Millennium Development Goals. In most cases, there has been improvement, but it is, unfortunately, nominal. NGOs, much like foreign aid, can sometimes facilitate dependency and make it difficult for a country or group to overcome circumstances on their own. Or worse, they will fund the corrupt government, or opposition groups, while civilians continue to be slaughtered.

This is what I fear for Darfur. But aid is exactly what the displaced people are expecting. In a stunning article written in 2007, Amber Henshaw interviewed six people within the camps, asking them questions like, “What do you think is needed to reduce, and hopefully stop, the fighting and killing completely?,” and “What do you think could most change your situation right now?” The answer was always, “Protection from the international community.” The six Sudanese interviewees were convinced that nothing would change until troops, whether from the U.S. or another country, were deployed to shield them from the Janjaweed.

Millions of dollars have been poured into developing countries; yet, as the MDG report testifies, the change is negligible in relation to the resources. Perhaps it’s heartless to say that the Sudanese people have to do it themselves. But the fact of the matter is that history tells us they do.

{democracy:207}

Snow on Snow

01/29/2008, 10:00 am -- by Job Tate | 1 Comment

Perhaps you’ve heard of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, a Vermont farmer, turned amateur photographer, turned amateur scientist, turned mild sensation. In the early 1900s, Bentley used his 5,000+ collection of snowflake photographs to prove in a series of articles in National Geographic that no two snowflakes are exactly the same.

This sparked a romantic intrigue in readers and scientists alike, and his assertion was later proven true — that no matter how hard storms may precipitate, blanketing the vast acres of land in Siberia, Alaska, Tibet or Vermont, no snowflake will ever have an exact duplicate.

This is a compelling idea to consider as we step on, shovel through and wipe from our windshield the relentless number of snowflakes that visit us each year. I was recently indulging in this mind-expanding exercise while I watched it snow steadily, in weather warm enough that it was also melting and dripping off the roof in a reflection-inducing rhythm. Once perfectly unique crystals, now joined with others in a similar globular fate, speeding their melted way to form a drop falling off an eave. Never documented, never looked at, and never to be seen again.

The intricacy of a snowflake’s formation is too intense to ever truly comprehend, but its fragility pounded home to a level this human could master. I thought of a fetus — how at its very conception, it is immediately distinct, unique, exclusive and unrepeatable. Fetus But unlike a snowflake, it is not made by the chance encounter of high and low pressure systems, but rather the massive chemistry of human biology, emotion and decision.

And unlike a snowflake a fetus is not meant to quickly melt but rather grow, breathe, emote, possess fingerprints, and wrinkle. Despite its small size, a fetus — like a seed — carries the complexity to burst out, to mature into something astonishingly more. In fact, this is its very design, inexorable and compulsory.

But perhaps a fetus is most unlike a snowflake because one snowflake doesn’t require others to see it through to maturation.

And perhaps they are most similar in that all snowflakes — and all fetuses — have the same end together, in the ground.

Why We Believe: Vol. 8

01/20/2008, 12:00 pm -- by Job Tate | 1 Comment

This and following weekends, we will share the brief salvation testimony of each Bweinh!tributor. Read the previous seven right here.

There was a time in my life when I was living with a woman who was not my wife. I spent half my day crying and screaming in fits of inconsolable rage, drinking between 2 and 3 bottles a day — and then I turned two and moved onto solid foods.

This was how Houghton College’s Dr. Doug Gaerte began his chapel testimony, before a shocked, then hushed, then suddenly relieved student body, as he was one of the most gentle and Christlike professors on campus. He went on to explain that he had avoided giving his testimony before then because he felt, as do I, that his testimony was simply just not interesting enough. Like me, he was born into a Christian family and had been through the blitz of Sunday School and VBS to such a degree that the exact sea change of his soul was hard to pinpoint. And like me, he had to agree that that is a great testimony in and of itself.

But the fact remains that while a Christian heritage breeds a certain lifestyle that can be blessedly cyclical, the giving of one’s soul to Christ is not something that can be done for you. While I had a firm understanding of Jesus, and of grace even, at a tender age, it would take years to wrap my mind around my own salvation. My testimony doesn’t climax with my first altar experience at a camp in Northern Maine when I was 14, or at my baptism, or on a missions trip to Mexico when I was 16. These usual suspects were all pivotal, but they are, by no means, the true meat of my salvation.

As most people who know me somewhat intimately will tell you, I rarely exhibit Christ in any classic manner. I’m argumentative, counter-cultural, judgmental and oftentimes appallingly solo in my use of time, money and talents. I must strike many fellow believers as a builder who laid a real humdinger of a foundation, but seems content to live in a ramshackle lean-to atop it.

My struggles with other Christians and the constructed institution of Christianity is such an oozing scab that some might think a testimony from me — the clay that is apparently still drying — is a bit previous. But when I testify my faith, I feel no need to tell my story, so decidedly unfinished, unglamorous and incongruous. I’d just rather tell the story, as I glow with joy, of Christ’s death and resurrection — and no matter how I grapple with theology and fellowship, I do BELIEVE in it! I believe in the Jesus of the gospels and am never shy or ashamed of that.

For all of my faults, and the clumsy manner in which this testimony continues to grow and fester, I know I have a love for Jesus that will always rally. This hardest of hearts will always rise to the occasion, from no doing of my own but from a deeply seeded faith, as relentless and compulsive as gravity itself. This is Christ in me. This is my story. His story is my story, and I am plotless without Him.

Clash of the Titans LXIII: Huck a Conservative?

01/11/2008, 11:30 am -- by Steve | 24 Comments

In this corner, arguing that Mike Huckabee is a conservative, is Job!

And in this corner, arguing that Mike Huckabee is not a conservative, is Steve!

Steve wants me to make the argument that Huckabee is a conservative. While I think this is as easy as arguing that the oceans are wet, Steve seems to think it will require a verbal kung fu of fantastic flips and acrobatic maneuvering to prove. Steve thinks this because he has his own vision of a conservative, and being a consistent Republican gives him some degree of clout in that theatre.

However, Steve is not the mold from which all conservatives are born, and it is ridiculous for him to state, unequivocally, that issues such as the pro-life movement (and Governor Huckabee’s lifelong support of it) don’t even begin to align the man from Hope with others who also call themselves “conservative.”

There is not a soul on the planet that I agree with on everything. I could probably even make a creepy, Freudian argument that I don’t even agree with myself on everything. From W to Huckabee to my own father, I don’t completely agree politically with anyone, although I support all those three with thorough veracity. This is because the greater cause of a person with a conservative worldview is the achievement of a more conservative world — and it is obscene and politically motivated to try to say that Mike Huckabee is not a bona fide conservative, with some of the best traits of that station.

First, Mike Huckabee is the most serious outspoken and unmuddied pro-life candidate in the history of the party. He never engages in double-speak, and harbors true disgust for the attitude towards the unborn in the country. He also is aggressively against homosexual unions and for pulling out of Iraq prematurely. He is against universal health care, which is fast becoming a pan-liberal stance, and he wants to get rid of the income tax — the great golden chalice of American fiscal conservatism.

The governor also makes his support for Israel, Taiwan and South Korea a central part of his campaign, and he makes his intention of further pressure on the Cuban dictatorship an integral part as well. Huckabee was the first governor in the country to have a license for a concealed weapon, and his lifetime membership in the NRA is just the beginning of his support for Second Amendment rights — arguably the most authentic and robust of all the candidates. Mr. Huckabee is also a supporter of capital punishment (a point I personally disagree on, but a traditionally conservative one) and is the only candidate who has ordered the execution of inmates.

Really though, Steve just wants to rail against Huckabee’s history on taxes and immigration. I throw out immigration immediately. The issue of illegals in this country is too new, too organic, to immediately find its issues falling into political categories. I, with my President, support the guest-worker program. Many conservatives do not. But the supporting of the integration of Mexican people and culture into our country does not yet have a political home.

True, Mike Huckabee did aggressively lobby to allow the children of illegals born in this country to qualify for state scholarships — but I think it’s sad I have to teach a civics class to explain that if you’re born here, no matter the circumstances that brought your fetus over the border, you are a United States citizen. And it’s perverse to punish those children for their parents’ crime.

On taxes it’s true that the Governor had to raise taxes at times during his term, in response to the demands of his liberal legislature, but the Governor also lowered taxes with every chance he got. I doubt anyone would make the argument that George H. W. Bush is not a conservative, although he himself raised taxes as President. Sometimes, regrettably, tax-raising is a fact of federal life. And frankly, it can require a certain brand of bravery to do it.

But, as Steve asks us to do with Romney’s newfound social conservatism, we should dismiss the past and accept the candidate on what he currently runs on, and Huckabee runs on a tax-cutting platform. By every spoken and stated stance he takes, Governor Mike Huckabee is a true blue social and fiscal conservative and it’s painfully laughable that anyone should think otherwise.

This is not a political website; it is a website about everything, from the perspective of writers and thinkers who seek to follow the example of Jesus Christ. Several of us, and many more of you, don’t care much about politics, and so I try to ensure you won’t be overwhelmed by a flood of political coverage here. But some of the most interesting issues to me (and maybe you) are those bearing on faith. When Mike Huckabee began to take off, largely on an appeal to evangelical Christians, I watched closely. I did a lot of research on the man, what he believes, what he’s done, what he stands for. And I am left to conclude one thing.

Mike Huckabee is not a full-spectrum conservative.

Maybe you aren’t either! If not, this debate isn’t really that relevant. You might find that the governor’s beliefs match up well with your own, and if so, great! For Mike, those include a desire to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and bring al-Qaeda prisoners into the United States, granting them full constitutional rights and access to our courts — oh, and a promise to sign a federal ban on smoking in all public places, Constitution be darned! And I almost forgot how he freed thousands of prisoners and took hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable gifts!

Ahh, post-modern conservatism.

I need to make an admission, though. On social issues, to his great credit, Mike Huckabee is a consistent conservative. He is a friend of life and I will not minimize that for one second. But there are three legs to the conservative coalition, three parts to its whole. Gov. Huckabee possesses only one of those legs, the one, in fact, that the president affects the least. And if you’ve ever had the misfortune to sit on a one-legged stool, you know it won’t hold you up for long — even if it has a winning wooden smile and proudly boasts its status as a “Christian stool.”

One of those legs is foreign policy. Gov. Huckabee wrote, in an article he submitted as part of a series in Foreign Affairs, that our nation has been a cocky high school student that “dominates others” around the world. Willfully ignoring the actual history of attempts to gain UN cooperation that predated the Iraq invasion, he went on: “The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.”

When asked about the biggest foreign policy news during the campaign season — the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran — Huckabee was ignorant and clueless. Later, his excuse for cluelessness pointed the finger, again, at our sitting commander-in-chief: “President Bush didn’t read it for four years; I don’t know why I should read it in four hours.” Condoleeza Rice finally had to smack him down with the truth.

Which party are you in again, Huck? In these dangerous times, I don’t want a candidate who doesn’t know what he’s talking about in Iran or Pakistan, and can’t figure out who his foreign policy advisors are, probably because he doesn’t have any to speak of.

The third leg is fiscal conservatism. Job doesn’t mention that the results of Huck lowering taxes “every chance he got” was a net tax INCREASE of $505.1 million. And he wasn’t always “forced” to do it either — that link recounts his requests for tax increases. But now he misrepresents his record. Fiscal conservativism relies on cutting taxes whenever appropriate, and lowering spending whenever possible. That’s not Mike; under him, state spending increased 65.3% from 1996 to 2004, three times the rate of inflation.

It is not BRAVE to raise taxes, as Job improbably argues to my left (in so many ways). It is liberal — just like Huckabee’s endless rhetoric bloviating against CEOs and businesses. I sense a pattern. And his hopeless plan to replace the income tax with a national sales tax is not conservative. It’s just crazy.

Conservatives share a certain mindset — the underlying principles that have served the movement for years, including respect for life, belief in smaller government and a proper understanding of the Constitution and liberty. Mike Huckabee has the first principle in spades. But in place of the other two, he has something else entirely — a desire to have government solve our problems. This is the antithesis of conservatism. And it’s not at all “obscene” to point that out.

{democracy:200}

Focus on the Fancy-Free Vol. 3 — Babies

01/8/2008, 9:00 am -- by Job Tate | 5 Comments

Read Volume 1 and Volume 2 !

Q. Dear Focus on the Fancy Free: Babies are so expensive, smelly, messy and time-consuming. Should I really have a quiverful? — Jeremiah, New York

Focus on the Fancy-Free A. Thanks for writing, Jeremiah, and thanks for giving me the opportunity to say that most beautiful word — “No.” Not only are babies extremely time-consuming and high-pitched, they are also narcissistic. Their focus on being constantly held, hand-fed and coddled, while making every social event a personal stage for their tears is a classic example of conceit and self-absorption.

In short, babies need Christ — but I do not feel called to that mission field.

I adopt the Shaker stance of non-procreation. The Shakers were a British religious group who came to the States and established a series of hard-working and harder-worshiping colonies of Christians. They believed that if no one had babies, the end times would somehow be expedited, but they were so successful that there are currently only four of them left, in one small community in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. I guarantee they’re not interviewing youth pastor candidates. Their congregation is not rife with petty jealousies, discussions about introducing a drum kit into the worship service, or talk of bake sales — but most importantly, they do not have to endure the spine-shattering wails of an infant.

I would probably become a Shaker if it didn’t require such long hours of intense manual labor — another Shaker tenet.

Anyway, I know it’s a tough question. Many women can’t imagine a life without a baby, and most men can’t imagine a life without those same women. This type of algebra almost inevitably produces tots, with their Oshkosh overalls, plastic sippy cups filled with “juthe,” and back pockets full of crushed Cheerios.

Kids are simply unavoidable, so the discerning male must avoid these bambinos in any great amount. They are all-consuming! One either spends all his time severely spoiling the youth, aggressively rebuking them, or broiling in self-doubt about whether they’re doing one or the other, too much or not enough.

So yeah, have a baby or two. But show some restraint! Skip that third child and buy a nice home in Florida instead. Not only will it prove cheaper, but it will also give the kids you do have a tidy inheritance — which will help assuage their sadness over your years of distant and detached parenting.

Jobsquatch, Vol. 3

12/12/2007, 3:00 pm -- by Bweinh | 3 Comments

The question of Job Tate’s existence is far from settled. As morning broke, Tom thought he and Steve had enough evidence to prove it already, but Steve refused to go home when they were so close to possibly capturing the noble beast. Who was right? Was Tate toying with them? And can any man hope to see Job Tate’s face — and live?

On the day Americans celebrate as Job Tate’s birthday — we bring you this brave journey, captured on video.

Part one is here; part two is here, but now we bring you — the final chapter, right here!

Jobsquatch, Vol. 2

12/12/2007, 11:15 am -- by Bweinh | 4 Comments

Some refuse to believe Job Tate exists, but Steve and Tom knew it was true. After spending a fitful afternoon failing to find any woman in Vermont that could serve as “Tate bait,” the brothers return to home base — only to find a surprise waiting at the top of the stairs. Is this enough? Can the boys go home?

On the day Americans celebrate as Job Tate’s birthday — we bring you this brave journey, captured on video.

Part one can be seen here.

Now — onto part two, right here!

Jobsquatch, Vol. 1

12/12/2007, 1:45 am -- by Bweinh | 3 Comments

On the heels of the great debate over Job Tate’s existence, Steve and Tom traveled to Vermont last month to see if they could lure the great mythical beast out of hiding. They brought along a video camera, two leather jackets, their leftover fries from Wendy’s and a dream — a dream that they could finally capture the elusive Tate on film, to prove to the world once and for all that Job lives and breathes and walks among us.

Now — on the day Americans celebrate as Job Tate’s birthday — we bring you their journey, captured on video.

The first step? Part one . . . watch it here!

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Seven

12/11/2007, 10:00 am -- by Job Tate | 3 Comments

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Lost? Read part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six!

Well, Grandma, I did my deed. Your sweaters and stuff are now at the Salvation Army, your pictures boxed and shipped to New Hampshire. I’m sorry to take them from the heartland.

Your house was sold to a young couple from Texas or something. I thought you’d appreciate that. I found that $10 bill tucked in your TV Guide and took Becky to Dairy Queen with it.

We’re gonna write.

My last day in Chap, I ate all three meals in town and made my rounds, saying goodbye to a few people. Becky was on vacation with her family. In the diner, I saw the government man down the counter. Being two outsiders we naturally let our conversation fall into orbit, and I asked if he had the aerials with him, and if I could see them one last time. He obliged me and pulled them from his case, while encouraging the waitress to warm up his coffee. I thumbed through them casually at first while still maintaining a conversation with him, but then I began to become further engrossed in the photos.

Wait…

I thumbed back…then forward again.

Whoa whoa whoa.

I laid them out on the counter, moved the salt shaker, and laid out some more. Sound rushed into my ears and my brow grew hot. For the first and only time in my life, I placed my hand over my mouth in instinctual shock.

From the air above Chap, in a series of photos, I saw Boaz’s daily path complete. And I could see, before tears clouded my vision, that the path carefully, artfully, in cursive — wrote out the name “Amelia.”

Directly above the town, lovingly carved into the earth with vulcanized rubber, funded by aluminum, powered by 200 lbs. of ballast and the thrust of two tired legs.

Amelia.

The man noticed my reaction and asked me what was the matter. I explained in stutters.

“Holy sweet Jesus…” he said with a gasp.

In a daze he added, before we parted, “He did everything but dot the ‘i’…”

So I went home, got my car — not a Honda — and went back to school.

Graduated. Married.

House on Long Island.

Kids.

I’ve rethought that summer over and over again and I think of Boaz often, still — a man I will always admire but cringe at the thought of becoming.

I’ve replayed conversations over in my mind — you know what I mean. His death always bothered me. It was such an inglorious end for a man who turned out to be one of my life’s heroes.

Ugh.

But, hey, listen, let me tell you something and then I’ll let you go, aye?

On a rainy night last May, I was lying awake, with my wife on my shoulder, thinking. As you know, 2 a.m. is no man’s land for thought, and I let my mind wander if I can’t sleep. Car payments, my son’s touchdown last year, my first dog.

I smiled about the sculpture out in Missouri and wondered how it was weathering the years of rain and snow and wind without Boaz’s upkeep. Amelia was probably dead now too, it occurred to me — buried next to that rich punk. All of hers and Boaz’s little spots down in Florida overgrown or developed into housing units — the place where they’d met now a mini-mall with 50% off Dockers or something, ya know?

Rain steadily thumped my roof. In my drowsy haze, I retraced the lines of Boaz’s path in my mind, in service to him. Upkeeping the trail in my mind.

“Did everything but dot the ‘i’…”

I suddenly shot up in bed, rolling Katie over. Closing my eyes, I feverishly envisioned the photos as best as I could after 20 years. I could see the name “Amelia” in the hillside; up above, the highway.

And I thought, and envisioned, and gripped my comforter — and could see the ‘i’ in “Amelia” rising up and pointing at the highway, directly at the spot where Boaz had died.

Died, and dotted an ‘i.’

I fell back into the pillows.

My friend Boaz had died a cucumber.

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Six

12/4/2007, 2:00 pm -- by Job Tate | No Comments

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Lost? Read part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five!

Tumbledown Row and I were through. Back to Dean’s truckbed and talk of the Kansas City Royals. I drove the Buick up on the highway one day to see the spot for myself. It was marked with a few flowers and if you could understand Chap and Boaz’s route at all, you would be mystified by the spot. It made zero sense. The bus driver said he came out of nowhere on his bike. Thought he was a deer at first.

Made me miserable. Made the town miserable. I missed my friend.

The weeks passed pretty quickly. I left the sawmill having saved up more money than could really be spent in Chap, and set my sights on getting the house ready for the realtors to take over. I elected to seal the basement myself (we’re a capable lot, we Theins) and just get back east as soon as possible. I was down at the hardware store buying the sealant (heavy stuff, dontchaknow?) when I overheard a man speaking with Rick, the store manager, about aerial surveying being done by helicopter for the government.

“Might be gopher burrows,” Rick told him as they looked at pictures strewn over the counter.

“I thought of that,” the man said, between long sips of coffee. “But look, it’s too straight in places. Are there old lead pipes in those hills?”

“Lead pipes? Nonono… there’s nothing in those hills except for gophers maybe. Well, maybe this one…” Rick hunched down further over the photos. “This one runs up through Tumbledown Row…that might be pipes or something.”

“Tumbledown Row?” the government man asked, adjusting his cap and smiling a little.

“Yeah, just a series of old houses, destroyed by a tornado way back.”

“Earthquake,” his wife corrected him, hunting flies above the stove.

“Right,” he said absentmindedly, still focused on the pictures.

I edged closer to the photos and inspected them, curious to see the Row from the air. The visitor stepped aside willingly. I could see the Row all right — my stoop and the old well — and I could also see the anomaly he was curious about. From the air it looked almost silver-colored, cut into the hillside in definite patterns.

It hit me, and I said it as soon as I realized it — “Boaz’s path!”

I looked up, pressed my finger into the photo. “That’s Boaz’s path.” Rick’s wife was at my shoulder. “You’re right…look, Rick. This is where he finished the day by the IGA.”

We confirmed by the other photos.

“Boaz? I don’t….” the surveyor interjected. Rick’s wife sighed and told him the story with some sadness, but I noted a lot of pride as well, as she told of his funny patterns and interesting relationships in town. I felt some privilege welling up inside me as well.

The government man smiled. He wasn’t from around here, I could tell. He was a little suspicious.

“Those are some pretty interesting paths to take on a bike…daily.”

“Boaz was interesting,” Rick said defensively. “Daily.”

I saw the man later on the hillside inspecting the trails personally. He must’ve been truly mystified and I can’t blame him. I would’ve been too, if I hadn’t met Boaz.

–TO BE CONTINUED–

New Dan Brown Novel Asserts Jesus was Just Feeding His ‘Network’

12/3/2007, 10:38 pm -- by Job Tate | 2 Comments

In a controversial follow-up to the best-selling The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown will assert that Jesus Christ was merely “feeding His network” when he reportedly fed 5,000 people at one time in Galilee, circa 30 A.D.

Brown recently appeared on Larry King Live to discuss his new book, Jesus Crisis, and Brown’s main theory that Jesus was a loyal Verizon Wireless customer who would have been a challenge to the network, requiring them to traverse rough terrain and savage deserts. Having to feed His network would’ve logically been a subsequent trial.

Brown pointed to the passage in Matthew 14 where Jesus was said to feed 5,000 with just a few loaves of bread and two fish, then noted that just a chapter later, Jesus fed only 4,000. “Obviously,” Brown told King, “He was in a place with poorer reception.”

The new book also alludes to the “Bill of Turin,” which apparently shows incontrovertibly that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a “family plan.”

Clash of the Titans VII: Youth Ministry

11/27/2007, 3:00 pm -- by Bweinh | 1 Comment

Originally published March 23.

In this corner, arguing for the abolition of modern youth ministry, is Job!

And in this corner, arguing for the value of modern youth ministry, is Josh J!

Telling other Christians you don’t like youth ministry is like slipping up and implying to a woman that she should lose some weight; shocked disbelief melts quickly into scorn. Fortunately, my disregard for such is an orbital blessing of having zero tact — you just get used to people’s disgust.

I’ll preface this harangue by saying souls have been won via youth ministry and that is, truly, the end of the argument. We count such as joy. People have been called to it, some are genuinely and admirably good at it, and much of the unbelieving or disbelieving world is moved by it. And the people I know who do youth ministry are the some of the best believers in my Rolodex. Should any of those souls read this — you know who you are — I trust you won’t see it as a personal attack. I would test your food for you or check under your beds for intruders; I would gladly relinquish any pulpit to your greater gifts. And though I’ve been known to mock youth pastors, I regret that our subculture has lampooned them to a point where their enthusiasm and uniqueness are treated like the Kool-Aid pitcher crashing through your wall.

But I come at youth ministry from a comprehensive viewpoint. I see it as a huge financial expense that produces very little return, treated with special honor though it’s relatively new. In a country as morally orphaned as ours, the desire to tag in for parents incapable of teaching their kids about the gospel and moral living is intoxicating, I know. But this is impossible in the broad sense, a hacking at the leaves, not the root — especially when most youth pastors are emerging from their early twenties themselves. Still the Church throws millions of dollars at the institution because it seems so relevant, obvious and even sexy?

A major problem with youth ministry is that young people develop close personal relationships with their youth pastors, not with Christ. And by definition, this relationship ends, kicking the crutch out from under the teen. I’d be more comfortable with the ministry if pastors acted like shepherds, not buddies filling the hole of good influence for a time.

When I think of what we could do with the funds spent on youth ministry, I get excited. Churches could hire a prison pastor, a pastor for the elderly, a director for service projects. I’m uncomfortable with the fevered sense of inadequacy some bodies feel without a youth pastor, and the depth of our love for this template for success in the face of such a morass of spiritual needs. The preoccupation with youth ministry baffles me.

But in short, I’m a Christian fanboy; I love this faith to death and I’m already in line for the sequel. And youth ministry is my Jar Jar Binks. I don’t like seeing so much money and talent spent on a guild and culture that doesn’t produce the lasting belief or believers to account for all we pour into it.

I know, I know; I’m a pig. But that was a pretty big lunch she ordered.

Full disclosure — I’m what you might call a “professional Christian,” having made the entirety of my adult living working for the church, much of that with youth. But I also grew up exclusively in churches without a professional youth worker, and I believe very strongly in a full-Body approach to ministry.

In many ways, I agree with Job that the efficiency and effectiveness of youth ministry should be frequently evaluated, even scrutinized, just like every other effort of the church, to ensure we are doing what is right. But the idea that a church should not make a significant and concentrated investment in youth fails to measure up logically, Biblically, or even from Job’s preferred viewpoint, the “business model.”

Taking the coarsest argument first, from a business standpoint, it’s pretty much a given that developing product loyalty at an early age is sound business. Even if it involves an exorbitant present expense, hooking a customer early brings a payoff for the rest of his life. Just ask our friends at the tobacco companies (Oh, I forgot, they don’t advertise to minors anymore! *wink wink*). And if you don’t hook him early, someone else probably will, and you’ll have a much tougher time selling him later in life.

If Job wants to know where the urgency and insecurity comes from in churches without an intentional youth ministry, I have a theory — they don’t want their church to die off. Which is exactly what would happen to a group that failed to bring in new, young blood, and is, in fact, exactly what has happened or come close to happening in many churches.

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

In a world where more and more parents will not or cannot do this, the church must. Certainly every effort should be made to reach the whole family, but for those adults who choose to go their own way, yet send their young off to church, we must step into the gap. The church must stand up and give our youth the best possible opportunity to choose the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I know that I am the man I am today because of the lessons I learned when I was young. I was blessed to learn them in my home, and I take that blessing seriously enough to fight the uphill battle to teach them to kids whose homes contradict them daily.

Do we need to make sure we’re giving our kids the real thing? Absolutely. Do we need to be careful not to segregate the Body? Without a doubt.

But where there are failings in these or other areas, it’s an area for that church to improve, not an indictment of focusing on such a bountiful harvest.

{democracy:9}

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Five

11/26/2007, 2:00 pm -- by Job Tate | No Comments

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Lost? Read part one, part two, part three, and part four!

Boaz and I talked about pretty much everything under the sun. Tumble-Down Row was like our own little Acropolis, and we laughed, disagreed and found common ground — just basking in good-natured, unexpected, mutually beneficial interaction that spanned generations and geography with effortless ease.

I was self-indulgent one day and blabbered on about an ex-girlfriend and all the things about her that had annoyed me. Boaz was silent for a long time, staring down the row. But when he responded, it was with the single wisest thing I’ve ever heard pass from a man’s lips — wise, oddly freeing, and mutedly passionate.

Sticking his hands out with his palms up, looking at them as if they were him complete, he said, “If I can live with all my faults, I sure as hell can live with the faults of those I love.”

Summer was passing pretty quick. The only thing remaining was to get the basement sealed — and the only guy for miles who did it was backed up with basements all over Chap. I told him to take his time. Becky had this thing she did when she kissed ya, dontchaknow, and well…

Boaz spoke of Amelia only once to me. I asked him for his funniest memory. He told me about a Saturday they spent in Georgia going to a wedding of a close friend of hers. The reception was a good three towns over, and the two of them followed a few people who knew the way. Boaz was driving the Chevy and Amelia announced that she had to go to the bathroom. “She was trying, God bless her,” but consumed lemonade was overwhelming her. They couldn’t pull over or they would get separated.

Boaz tried to distract her, but with every mile, it just got worse and worse. She was not smiling anymore, and she gripped the door, pressing her legs together. She looked at him with pain. He smiled at her.

“Just go,” he said.

“What?!”

He told her again to just go — right there on the seat.

She said the embarassment would kill her.

He took her hand. “I’ll go too.”

Her eyes lit up. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

“Ya promise, Bo?”

“I promise.”

And right there on the interstate outside Savannah, Boaz and Amelia relieved themselves. They found a thicket behind the reception hall where they parked and changed into the jeans they’d brought. “We danced up a storm too,” he said, looking away.

Soiled a bit, but in love and in denim, they were free to enjoy themselves.

I could tell he loved her dearly.

Becky and I were down by the hardware store when we heard about Boaz. McCallister told us with labored breaths, wiping his glasses, that Boaz had been hit by a bus up on the highway skirting Chap.

Killed instantly.

Nobody understood. It was way off his usual route.

“He must’ve gotten lost,” McCallister said, not believing it.

Do you believe I cried?

I did.

Do you believe I lied?

What a punch to the gut.

— TO BE CONTINUED —

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Four

11/19/2007, 1:00 pm -- by Job Tate | No Comments

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Lost? Read part one, part two, and part three.

I learned that Boaz’s main mission in life was the collection and redemption of aluminum cans, which he placed in the basket of his brown Ross bicycle. That was how we first talked. He had rested his bike along his path (He never rode off his trail; he’d tenderly dismount, carefully lower the bike to the ground, and hoof it in search of cans, which he’d turn in at the IGA for the Iowa 5-cent deposit. They had some arrangement, I guess. His bike was crap in a succession of crap — Becky said he got a different one every year or so from a yard sale, and some people in town made it their tradition to throw old bikes on the lawn in front of his trailer. They were always funny-looking and sometimes funny-sounding but he kept pretty good care of them. Too long an aside? Sorry. Patience with me?…) and walked over to pick up some Coors cans from the well — and he nodded at me in a very kind way. I nodded back and his face exploded into a smile.

What a reward, a smile from Boaz.

Every time he smiled, he drew in a satisfied breath that made a little wheezing sound. He wasn’t a serial smiler but he wasn’t stingy with them either. As he returned to his bike with an armful of cans, I asked him if he wanted my Sprite can. He peered at me through his thick glasses, standing over his bike. “You betcha,” he said, drawing in a breath and smiling widely, as he looked around excitedly for a place to put his silver haul. I still had over 1/2 of the soda left but successfuly had it finished by the time he had walked over.

And it was thus. I built a bridge to Mr. Bloom over a river of Sprite.

Boaz, for all my affection for him, was not well. I mean, aside from over 30 years of compulsively riding the same route day in and day out in search of cans, he had some very interesting and unconventional ideas. He told me on more than one occasion of his absolute certainty that Hondas were meant to destroy America. He wasn’t racist against the Japanese or anything, but he had an elaborate theory that every Honda was rigged as a bomb, set to go off at the same time. Rush hour, probably, he posited, they’ll all go off, killing their occupants, creating roadblocks and confusion. Garages would be blown sky high, and fires would engulf everything the Hondas were near. Mass carnage, dontchaknow?

Then, while we were all scurrying around dealing with exploding Hondas, the Japanese would invade. “But I don’t mind sushi,” he’d say with a grin.

And oh…the Wrigley’s sandwich. As he got to know me better and found me to be a willing ear, he’d spend pretty much my whole lunch break with me. He religiously turned down anything I offered him, but would instead pull from his pocket a fistful of gum wrapped in newspaper and sit next to me. He did this thing, see, where he’d make a Wrigley’s sandwich — sticks of Doublemint, Big Red and Juicy Fruit placed back to back, then stuffed into his mouth.

“What’s that taste like?” I asked, trying, lazily, to hide my grin.

“Big Red is the winner usually,” he responded, as he sucked the sugary saliva to the back of his throat. “But Doublemint won once, so I keep waiting to see if he can repeat.”

“About 40,000 nickels,” he said in response to my question about how much he paid for his first car. He always had a complex way of saying simple things. And he’d never had a pickle, but he’d had a few pickled cucumbers. I think he resented the notion that being submerged in brine for long periods of time changed the essence of what a cucumber was.

Boaz was from Florida, I learned, and had come to Missouri with the Forest Service to dismantle old railroads and return the ground to its natural state or whatever. He told me about finding fish fossils under the railroad ties. When they were done fixing the fields, he stayed in Chap.

I coaxed from Ginnie, the gal at the post office, that the reason was lost love. Some girl back in Florida had married another man while he was gone, a real spurious event. Her family was in severe financial trouble, and a suitor with all the answers, and all the shekels, had come along.

Boaz never had a chance to fight; she had a new last name and zip code by the time he’d heard anything about it. He had been notified through a letter Ginnie had sorted. He was crushed, and the town was pretty hushed in talking about it. They were always pretty protective of their little oddity.

I guess Boaz and that girl were really in love. But these things happen sometimes, right? Romance can be a cruel world sometimes, and I pity the person who loves without thick skin. But if you knew Boaz, a spent man tinged with remarkable intelligence, whom you knew would die where you met him, you’d wish you could get some answers.

–TO BE CONTINUED —

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Three

11/13/2007, 10:30 am -- by Job Tate | No Comments

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Lost? Read part one and part two.

I didn’t mind the work at the sawmill actually, except there was absolutely no talking or singing while you worked, or you’d spoil your appetite on quarts of sawdust. But it was solid work, the kind that builds muscle with power.

“Localized power,” a friend in Maine used to tell me. “When you get attacked by a man in your home,” he said, “you’re not going to settle it by asking him to see who can bench more weight. You’re gonna wanna get his blood flowing into his eyes so he can’t see, and then you’re gonna want to work him over real good, top to bottom, so he can’t run very far. And you’ll need power for that. Localized power.”

Lifting wood at a steady pace is pretty local. And while I enjoyed the opportunity to think, I sorta began to dread lunchtime a little — the only time during the day when the drone of the saws died down, and everyone could talk about last night’s game or whatever. We’d all gather around Dean’s truck bed to eat, but I found their conversation hard to engage.

They went to pretty good lengths to let me join in, but in the end, my presence was a little disconcerting for everyone, what with my choice of somber silence or lame attempts at noise. I didn’t want to eat apart, but still at the mill (lest they get the impression that I thought I was better than they were), so I elected to simply make myself scarce for the 45-minute break.

And that’s where I met Boaz.

The mill was built into a hillside (or what passes for a hill in Missouri), and behind its sheds was an old portion of the town — abandoned, I was told, because an earthquake 80 years prior had shifted the ground in such a way that almost every foundation had been ruined. Roofs had collapsed and entire structures softened. I guess the Midwest does have a pretty big fault line under it. I read about it at the library once, but those kinds of books need more pictures.

Devastation requires more than Times New Roman, if you ask me.

The buildings had been scuttled of their valuable parts, with siding and shingles taken down to the lower portion of Chap and put to use — but frames and some of the cracked foundations of the old homes and bank were left. Over time the town came to refer to this area with equal amounts of affection and embarassment as “Tumbledown Row.”

I had a good doorstep, covered in shade by an oak that must’ve slept with one eye open (with the mill chopping up her kin right behind her), and this was my lunchtime throne, from which I surveyed my 45 minutes of quiet kingdom. Sometimes I’d see the carcass of a beer party strewn about an old well ten paces to my left. It did have that quality. If this were New Hampshire, my friends and I woulda claimed this place too for such things. It had the romance, ya know?

I enjoyed Tumbledown Row. The devastation must have been shocking and tear-worthy back then, but what was tear-worthy then was a punchline of a picnic table for me now.

My third day eating lunch on the Row, I heard some jangling coming up the hillside. It had a musical quality with a steady rhythm, and I didn’t feel imposed or intruded on in the least — which is a good way to remember first seeing and meeting Boaz. The jangling was the chain on a bicycle, and the rhythm was Boaz’s steady pumping of the pedals, as he crested the “hill” and entered the Row. What a sight.

The going rate in town for his age was 67, and he was pure bald, with an upper torso that must’ve weighed an easy 200 lbs. alone, full of a big, bulbous gut that was far too curious-looking to be repulsive. I only knew Boaz in the summertime, so I can only dress him for you in the series of Navy blue T-shirts, tube socks, thick glasses and gray Ocean Pacific shorts he always wore. And my noon hour interactions with him were always after he had pedaled himself into a red, flushed face.

But this man’s legs were massively powerful, and with every stroke he took on his bike, every step he strode, his legs came to life with a flurry of muscle and vein. This was a man who lived on his bike, and he was an interesting composite of its ill effects and positive benefits.

Boaz rode his bike on an obsessive-compulsive path that I later learned was his own creation, from years and years of riding the same route. It was a solid, packed length of earth about 4 inches wide that spread around Chap’s upper half. I’d run into a section of it once behind the IGA, when I went to get some ice from their machine, and I saw the trail cut straight through the field, then disappear as it ran into Fair Street.

I distinctly remember ignoring it; I figured it was a Missouri thing. Something religious, or mule deer, an old boundary or something.

Indians maybe.

Oh, and the ice was for my shoulder. Localized power, dontchaknow.